Tequila Mockingbird (Sinners #3)

Fingers in deep

Don’t let it end

Confused and alone

Someone’s puppet again

—Scratch My Sin



“DID YOU have to bring all of Sinner’s Gin with you to look at these?” Kiki grumbled, passing a stack of booking photo slips over to Forest.

“No, just the ones that are alive,” he muttered under his breath. “They wanted to come. It’s for support.”

“They’re signing autographs.” She rolled a chair over to the desk where he sat, staring at the musicians standing at the edge of the bull pen. “Shit, now Damie’s autographing some chick’s boobs. They’re going to get my ass kicked.”

Forest glanced over his shoulder at the guys who’d brought him in. Damie looked like he was eating up the attention, and Miki had what Forest now knew was his “public” face on, an inscrutable, polite mask he donned to work through a crowd of grasping people. He met the singer’s eyes and winked, getting Miki to crack a wry smile at him.

It’d been almost three weeks since the stolen van crashed through the Amp, and in that time, the shift in his life was nearly too much for Forest to wrap his mind around. The band—the band—was his lifeblood. Spending hours with Miki and Damie playing made him almost forget someone was trying to kill him. At first, he’d wondered if the two guys were merely humoring his presence so Connor didn’t worry about him being alone, but they’d clicked. He endured Damie’s boisterous ego and laughed with Miki when the guitarist went off about music in general.

And the playing—God, the music they made—it flowed through his soul and filled him. Then there was Connor.

He tugged at his jeans, silently scolding his quickly hardening dick. Shit, even thinking about the man gave him a hard-on. Not something he wanted to deal with in the middle of the day without Connor around to help him get rid of it.

“Perv,” Forest scolded his cock. “You’re at a goddamned police station.”

His cock ignored him, continuing its merry little happy dance as if to remind him cop was now on the list of erotic words that got Forest horny.

“Fucker,” he muttered halfheartedly.

“Hey.” Miki pulled up a chair and sat by Forest’s elbow, peering over his arm to look at the photos. “These the guys Frank had a beef with?”

“Some,” Kiki replied. “Mostly people he knew back in the day—when he was more of a druggie. Or at least getting popped more for possession.”

“He was a stoner, sure,” Forest murmured, staring at the photos. “But nothing hard. Nobody gets killed over pot.”

“Ackerman, people get killed for stealing someone’s pen,” she replied caustically. “Take your time and just look through the photos. See if you recognize anyone who’d come by the Amp recently. It’s a long shot, but something might hit you. You wait here. I’m going to get Mr. Rockstar out of sight before my captain spots him and I get chewed out.”

He sat, listening to Miki hum and sing next to him. The man was never quiet, not really. He vibrated with sound, a thrumming soul only silent when he was asleep. And, as Forest discovered one day when Miki’d passed out on the couch, he sang then too.

“I like that,” Miki said softly. “What you just tapped out. Here, write it down.”

“You write it down,” Forest said, ruefully discovering he’d started drumming on the tabletop in time with Miki’s humming. Passing over a pen and notepad from a stack on Kiki’s desk, he waved the photos in the air. “I’ve got homework. Jesus, Frank knew a lot of lowlifes. This is going to take forever.”

They worked in silence, Miki scribbling down music while Forest stared at faces he didn’t know. He pulled out five shots of maybes, then glanced over to where Damie still stood, talking and smiling at the small cluster of people around him.

“He really likes that, huh?” Forest murmured to Miki.

“Yeah, D’s always been the rock star. Even before he was one.” Miki’s mouth tugged into a smirk. “He used to pour on the charm to get laid. Now he’s getting laid, and there’s nowhere for it to go. Going to explode if we don’t do something about it soon.”

“Eh?” Forest cocked his head, not following what Miki was saying. “I don’t get it.”

“We’re going to have to get up on stage soon.” Miki stopped writing long enough to look toward Damien. “He kind of needs that. Always has. So, there it is. Got you now on drums. All we’re missing is a bassist. ’Cause yeah, I can play one, but I’m fucking mediocre. I don’t want to sing in front of crappy music.”

Forest let the man’s words sink in, and he swallowed. “Wait, I’m your new drummer? For a band?”

“What the fuck do you think we’ve been doing these past few weeks?” he growled under his breath. “Knitting? Yeah, you’re our fucking drummer. Shit, Forest. Dude, what the fuck?”